6 Amazing Email Marketing Tools

When it comes to email marketing and reaching out to your clients, some think that it’s just getting the lead and assigning it to a drip campaign – then having a system do the rest for you. Well, not anymore. That used to be the case back in yesteryear, get a client; assign them to a campaign; hope they bite. With new tech and software driving client engagement, there are additional points to follow, stats to look at and possible ideas to tweak to make the best email marketing campaigns possible.

It’s important to understand that a lot of your success with email marketing depends on the email marketing software you choose because it’s responsible for making sure that your emails get delivered. I’m going to go over some applications that I think are some of the best when it comes to email marketing.

MailChimp

I personally use this application and I like it for the ease of use. The easy to read dashboard when you log into the system makes the learning curve very small. MailChimp is one of the most popular email marketing solutions out there, with most companies who are looking to experiment with email marketing defaulting to this app. The initial account set up is both easy and straightforward. When I was first introduced to email marketing, I found the interface easy to understand. The great thing about MailChimp is that it offers a free forever plan that you can get started with right away. As you start to gain more clients there are plans priced out based on client count. Some of the features that I find beneficial are…

  • Landing Page Builder: With MailChimp I’m able to build landing pages for products. It’s super easy to accomplish and they provide tracking with the landing page to ensure I can see statistics!

  • Facebook Integration: By integrating Facebook with MailChimp, it was very easy to run Facebook adverts for custom and lookalike audiences using my email subscribers list. It’s also easy to run Facebook adverts with the lead generation objective right from MailChimp.

  • Analytics: MailChimp has easy to understand email analytics. This helps me measure some metrics which gives me an idea of what’s working, what’s not working, and how to improve my marketing.

  • Advanced Segmentation: This give you the ability to send extremely personalized emails to specific people groups, so they do not look like mass marketing emails.

Drip

Our next application is Drip. Drip is a powerful email marketing platform for eCommerce, bloggers, and digital marketers. They offer a wide range of tools to make marketing automation and personalization easy. Drip touts itself as the world’s first ECRM or eCommerce CRM system. Drip’s goal is to allow its users to focus on the “human side” of eCommerce. Before you decide to move on, you’ll want to learn a little about this one – it’s pretty awesome. As compared to other apps’ sequence builders’, Drip’s is definitely a lot more intuitive and comes with a simpler interface. If you want to set up a simple automation rule, you can do this using “Rules”. If you’re building something more complex, then use “Workflows” instead. That will make your life a lot easier!

Constant Contact

Next, we are going to dive into Constant Contact. I used to use this one before I got deep into MailChimp and at one point it was my preferred application! Constant Contact might seem like an old-school email marketing app, hence why I said I used it before I got somewhat better at email marketing. It still manages to hold its own against other newer apps. One of the great things about Constant Contact is it comes loaded with hundreds of email templates. They are all mobile-optimized, and you can utilize the drag and drop editor to edit them to your desired look and feel. Some amazing features that Constant contact have are…

  • Email Automation: This includes things like surveys & polls, coupons, online donations, and subject line A/B testing which helps you send targeted emails to maximize your open rate.

  • Marketing calendar: They offer a marketing calendar that makes viewing what emails are scheduled to go out very easy.

  • Email templates: Hundreds of email templates at your disposal.

Convert

Onward and upward we go to the next application, ConvertKit. ConvertKit is a creator-focused email marketing tool that caters to bloggers and entrepreneurs. In this day and age, you don’t have to be a top tier blogger to find the advantages in this application. You might find that this marketing email platform is the right one for you. With ConvertKit, you can easily segment subscribers into those who are interested and those who have already purchased. So, in real estate terms you can segment and tailor your marketing email very precisely to those individuals. This helps you increase conversions with automated emails that feel more personal. In marketing terms, this is called targeted email marketing. I also like ConvertKit’s drag & drop sequence builder. The builder works like a dream; it’s highly streamlined, and it displays your workflows in the context of whatever goal you’re trying to achieve. Goals are displayed in such a way that you’ll have a much better idea of where you want to go – what you want to accomplish.

  • Tag-based system: Lets you segment your lists to be more refined for email marketing.

  • Drag & drop sequence builder: The drag & drop sequence builder allows you to create complex sequences with little to no fuss and it gives you a view of all of your workflows that are happening: so you are never lost or never forget what has gone out and what’s in production.

AWeber caters more to small business entrepreneurs. I’m not saying that if you’re not a small business you cannot use it, but if you look into it and like the functionality, the user experience and the feel of it then hey, why not! This is going to sound crazy but, this email marketing app has been in business since 1998, and they keep improving upon their product to bring value to their users. Which in my opinion, is the best type of business model you can have. Aweber allows its users to choose whether their subscribers are added via a single or double opt-in, which I thought was very interesting.

With a single opt-in, your customer will be subscribed immediately after completing a form, which is pretty standard. But if you use a double opt-in, your customer will have to click on a link in a confirmation email to complete their subscription. You can connect Aweber to 100+ apps like Facebook Lead Ads, Salesforce, GoToWebinar, etc. using connector apps like automate.io.

  • Flexible opt-in process: As you can see, they give you great opt-in options that are easy and hassle free. By split testing opt-in forms to increase subscriber base you can see what form is better for client subscriptions and use that to gain your client base.

  • Best autoresponder: They have some of the best autoresponder templates that I have seen, which makes your life a great deal easier. They have about 700 responsive email templates (across devices). Here is the direct link to their website to see the templates and learn a little more about them. Click here

GetResponse is an all-in-one marketing platform that you can use to create email campaigns, set up landing pages, host webinars, and more. Now that is a one stop shop! One of the cool things about this application is, if you are only interested in the app’s email marketing features, the basic “Email” plan is pretty much all you need. If you want to use GetResponse as a CRM solution and use it to host webinars, you’ll have to sign up for one of their premium plans. Pricing on the application is pretty standard and can range from $15-$99.

One cool feature that it comes with is a “Spam Score” function that’s pretty handy. This is a nifty little tool that can help you out tremendously. When you preview your email, the app will automatically calculate a Spam score that reflects the likelihood of your email being marked as Spam. If your score is dangerously high, then you’ll want to tweak your newsletter (less salesy terms, decrease the HTML to text ratio, etc) before sending it. This will make it so your marketing emails always and up in the inbox and get the attention they deserve!

Two other unique features that this application has: “Time Travel” and “Perfect Timing”. First, time travel allows you to deliver newsletters to recipients based on their local time — so if you schedule your newsletter to go out at 3 PM, the app will auto-calibrate so that your subscribers from all over receive your newsletter at 3 PM, their time. No more trying to decipher time zones to get the perfect email out.  Perfect Timing, on the other hand, is an optimization feature that predicts the best time of day to send mail to your subscribers. MailChimp has this feature and it is one of the most valuable features any email marketing application can have. You can also connect GetResponse to hundreds of apps like Facebook Lead Ads, Salesforce, Google Sheets, etc. using connector apps like automate.io.

  • Spam score: Such a useful tool! It will help you drastically cut out verbiage and useless information to make a better email to your clients.

  • Time Travel and Perfect Timing: This takes the guesswork out of email, instead of manually A/B testing your campaigns to figure out the best timing, you can simply use this feature instead! I think it is amazing that it schedules the time accordingly to different locations.

  • Marketing automation: Using GetResponse, you can trigger different steps of a workflow based on when your subscriber enters your list. This makes it easier for you to keep track of the workflow.

Erik Groeniger

Customer Support at Agent Marketing